The theme of this year's IEEE ICCA plenary session revolves around Automation vs. Artificial Intelligence. We are privileged to have four distinguished experts and educators in this field join our panel, where they will share their expertise, insights, and visions. Together, we will delve into the challenges facing research in control and automation, both current and emerging.
Furthermore, this panel will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas and engaging in discussions on broader topics in control and automation. It also provides an invaluable opportunity for the audience, especially students and junior researchers, to glean insights from senior members of our community.
Meet our distinguished panelists below, presented in alphabetical order
University of Alberta
Canada
Dr Tongwen Chen is presently a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Monitoring and Control in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. In the past, he received the PhD and MASc degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and BEng degree in Automation and Instrumentation from Tsinghua University.
His research interests include computer- and network-based control systems, process safety and alarm systems, and their applications to the process and power industries. He has served as an Associate Editor for several international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and Automatica. He received the 2021 Outstanding Engineer Award from IEEE Canada. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian Academy of Engineering.
Queen's University
Canada
Dr Martin Guay is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Queen's University. Dr. Guay's research interests are in the area of process control, control theory and applied statistics. Dr. Guay received the Queen's University Chancellor Research Award and the Premier Research Excellence Award. He also received the Syncrude Innovation Award and the D.G. Fisher Award from the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineers. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Process Control and Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. He is an Associate Editor for Automatica and the Canadian Chemical Engineering Journal.
University of Virginia
USA
Dr Zongli Lin is the Ferman W. Perry Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia. He received his B.S. degree in mathematics and computer science from Xiamen University, Xiamen, China, in 1983, his Master of Engineering degree in automatic control from Chinese Academy of Space Technology, Beijing, China, in 1989, and his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, in 1994.
His current research interests include nonlinear control, robust control, time delay systems, and control applications. He was elected a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2008–2010, 2019– 2021) and chaired the IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Nonlinear Systems and Control (2013–2015). He has served on the operating committees of several conferences and will be the General Chair of the 2028 American Control Conference. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals and is the Editor of the Birkhauser book series Control Engineering. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, AAAS and CCA.
Tallinn University of Technology
Estonia
Professor Eduard Petlenkov defended his PhD at Tallinn University of Technology in 2007 on the topic of Neural Networks based control of complex nonlinear systems. He is a Tenured Full Professor of Intelligent Control Systems at the Department of Computer Systems, Tallinn University of Technology and the Head of the Centre for Intelligent Systems.
His main research interests lie in the domain of intelligent control, system modelling and analysis, digital twins, fractional order systems and energy informatics. He is actively involved in development of intelligent energy efficient control algorithms for commercial buildings.
